NZ Hot Rod Magazine

The Marsh Motorsport complex is tidy and
well laid out. Any engine building procedure
is capably carried out to the finest detail.
Marsh Motorsport
By Greg Stokes
With any aspect of rod building or
racing, the result is only as good as
the time and money invested. Talent
and skill are major factors and when
it comes to engine building it’s hard
to go past Tony Marsh and the team
at Marsh Motorsport. It’s a pretty bold
claim but when you stop to consider
the lengthy career of Tony dating back
to the early seventies in the Hawkes
Bay area, you begin to understand
where the knowledge and talent at
Marsh Motorsport stems from. A little
ironic as Tony and his son Anthony
are set to campaign an ex Kalitta/
Read NHRA-spec Top Fuel Dragster
as well as their A/Fuel version. Tony’s
humble drag racing beginnings were
coming runner-up to Butch Reid’s Dr
Zhivago Ford Pop with his 1800cc
Anglia! That was at the Napier Airport
in 1972 and Tony was both a member
of the Hawkes Bay Car Club and the
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Hawkes Bay Rod & Custom Club.
Tony then built his first purposebuilt front engine dragster with a
Vauxhall 3.3 Cresta engine and ran it
at the first Thunderpark shakedown
meeting in 1975. It was with a Chrysler
265 for power where Tony was able
Father and son team who
work and play together.
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Mike Black’s Marsh Motorsport built-twin
supercharged 540 big block produced 1092hp with
960ftlb of torque! The dyno has had up to 1600
horsepower on it and is available for $800 per day.
Anthony line-boring a block
in the Sunline hone.
Tony is honing lifter bores in the
Sunnen lifter bore hone.
to run in the high nines at 146mph. This engine was then put
into what was known as the Stud Cola Fiat altered and ran 10.4
at 131mph. Next up in 1980 was another front engine dragster
running an injected smallblock Chev running a 9.0 off the trailer
but it blew the trans every pass. Dejected with the rail, Tony parted
it out and this came to be the Martin & Rea dragster now owned
by Greg & Mark Stokes. Tony’s trade background was as a motor
mechanic and he’d finished his apprenticeship in the Watties Foods
workshop and went on to Nuttall Auto Services which had a dyno
and was a local hang-out for rodders in the Hawkes Bay area.
After getting out of the dragster, Tony decided to give circuit
racing a go in the hugely popular Shell Sport Series and actually
won the 1983-84 championship with a Datsun coupe. Along the
way in 1982 he went and worked for Reg Cook who was also racing
in the Shell Sport Series. Working at Reg’s only lasted two years
as they were competitors on the track. “We were always at each
other”, says Tony so he started Marsh Motorsport in Manukau City,
Scott Marsh turning down counterweights
for crankshaft balancing.
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The Sunnen balancer is capable of
crank balancing within 0.1 of a gram.
Chris detailing and deburring a block in the
porting room. Port matching, cylinder head
porting and flow-testing is all carried out
on-site and the team know all the tricks!
Auckland. Trying something totally
different, Tony went rallying from
1985 to 1988 with the Possum Bourne
RX3. Tony would stop racing to focus
on the business and built the Keiran
Wills RX8 which was a Mazda RX7
with V8 power. Running in the Sports
Sedan class, the car was sponsored by
Mobil then TV3 and then Wills’ own
business Aztec Corn Chips. The car
was campaigned very successfully until
1992 which was around the time the
business was relocated to East Tamaki
where it’s now on 3b Smales Road.
“It sounds like we left drag racing
behind but we’ve always been into it
as well as a wide variety of most forms
of motorsport”, says Tony. In fact, past
Top Alcohol drag racer Dave Bright
worked at Marsh Motorsport while
campaigning his Donovan powered Top
Alcohol rear engine dragster. Kieran
Wills then bought an ex USA Riley Scott
Camaro for Trans Am racing and Marsh
Motorsport ran that until 1994. Heading
off in a different direction, Tony
Chris machining Cleveland heads
on a Sunnen Head Shop.
The A/Fuel dragster will be run a
few times this coming season.
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The new Top Fuel dragster
is sponsored by the Mount
Shop and Marsh Motorsport
and has run a 4.40!
then went offshore
powerboat racing with
“Midnite Express”
which Anthony
now owns. The
blown 532 big block
Chev built at Marsh
Motorsport produced
1060 horsepower
on Marsh’s in-house
dyno. It was 2000
when Tony returned
to drag racing with a
Berry-built rear engine
dragster which was
known as the Forest
Tony’s Stud Cola Fiat made the
Loaders and then the
cover of the March 1978 issue
of NZ Hot Rod Magazine.
Metalman car. With
a naturally aspirated
smallblock Ford engine it was the first carburetted
dragster to run a 6-second pass over the quarter
mile outside the USA at Willowbank in 2004!
A Spitzer rear engine car was purchased from the
USA in 2007 and Anthony started his drag racing
career in 2009. It was 2010 when the team laid claim
to having the world’s fastest naturally aspirated
smallblock Ford! It ran a best of 6.79 at 199.22mph just
shy of the elusive 200mph! What’s interesting is the
Americans have only achieved 196mph with similar
configurations! The engine is now in Australia and
holds the
B/Altered record in Phil Otto’s car. The frame is now
A timeless shot is Tony circa 1980 in
the smallblock Chev powered front
engine digger. The rolling frame is
now owned by Greg & Mark Stokes.
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15/10/12 3:03:48 PM
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The naturally aspirated smallblock Ford dragster
was a huge credit to Marsh Motorsport.
Jon Bates’s Mazda Rotary powered
dragster. After talking with Bill
Douche and Darryl Peterken (Marsh’s
longstanding crew) the challenge was
put forward to look into stepping
up to a nitro car – an A/Fueler to be
precise. Tony sold his house, his car,
his boat and bought Tom Conway’s
A/Fuel Dragster in October 2010.
Running in the Top Alcohol class,
Tony’s son Anthony has pedalled
the beast to become the fastest
and quickest at 5.40 at 268mph.
Just in July this year, the next chapter
of nitro racing at Marsh Motorsport
began. “It was Plank Sherwin who
planted the seed, after talking about
Reece Fish buying the Bob Shepherd
Top Fuel car from Australia”, says Tony.
It was learnt that Jim Read Racing had
a car available for sale so Tony gave
Jim a call and then called the bank
and a deal was done! “You only live
once and are a long time dead”, says
Tony. Even with the knowledge and
lengthy career which Tony has, he
even admits running a Top Fuel car is a
huge learning curve and a great deal of
respect has to be taken as if handling a
grenade with the pin pulled. We guess
that train of thought sums up things
with Marsh Motorsport very well. Tony
comes from a diverse racing background
and has some strong relationships with
performance parts manufacturers all
over the world, which keeps him well
up to date with the latest technology.
Experience, race wins, technology and
creative thinking is what the success of
Marsh Motorsport is built on. Whether
it’s a mild-to-wild street engine or a fullon high performance race engine, Tony
and the team at Marsh Motorsport are
definitely the go-to guys for a range of
services through to complete engine
building and dyno tuning. Like most
good things, Marsh Motorsport offers
excellent bang for your buck and has
a great deal of repeat business. “We
are also proud to have built 44 NZ
championship winning engines over
all forms of motorsport”, says Tony.
Visit www.marshmotorsport.co.nz or email
[email protected] or phone 09 274 7997.
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